The president seemed to understand what Moore was telling him but he clearly remained suspicious. “How good is the science on this?”
Moore didn’t hedge; no time for that now. “Most physicists are certain that the universe is made up of more than three dimensions. String theory and quantum mechanics currently suggest eleven dimensions, but at the very least we know of four: the three spatial dimensions—height, width, depth—and the fourth, time.
“In general, we consider time as unidirectional, moving forward and not backward, but we know for certain that it can be distorted by relativity, and if we’re correct about where and when this stone came from, then we can be fairly certain that that unidirectional concept of time is wrong. If that’s the case, then the transfer of simple electromagnetic energy through time would likely be far easier to accomplish than the safe travel of a human person through it.”
“Why don’t we see any other manifestations of this?” the president asked.
It was a difficult concept to explain. “Maybe a demonstration would work better,” he said.
He grabbed a foot-long piece of metal that had broken off of some cabinet. He placed it on the ground, its curving, silver shape looking like a flatter version of the St. Louis arch.
“Can you see this?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay, now imagine a two-dimensional world,” he said. “Flat, like this floor. If there are two-dimensional beings living there, they would only be able to see what exists within their two dimensions: things that exist on either the north-south or the east-west axis. But nothing up or down. Anything going vertically above or below this flat plane is literally beyond their ability to perceive.”
Moore pointed to the arch/handle. “So if we place this three-dimensional arch in their two-dimensional world they see only the points that intersect their.”
Moore touched the base of the curved metal handle. “Here and here,” he said. “They would identify each point as an independent two-dimensional object. What they would not be able to recognize is that the two objects were connected and were in fact one.”
He ran his hand along the arch.
“Now, if this were an electrical circuit and there were a power source attached to it, they would be able to sense the output at both ends, and they might even be able to determine that the two things were acting in concert, fluctuating at identical moments, but they would have no way of knowing where the power was coming from or why, because their entire plane of existence is contained in the flat two dimensions of the floor.”
President Henderson seemed to grasp this. “What you’re saying is that these stones are the same as those intersecting points on the floor, only in four dimensions.”
Moore felt he was getting somewhere. “Exactly. We can see and sense only the parts connected with our three-dimensional world, but if we’re right, there is some invisible conduit going through time that leads back to a power source, one that is pumping energy into the stones in massive quantities.”
“Okay,” the president said. “For the first time some of this is starting to make sense.”
Across from Moore, Stecker rose to his feet.
“Mr. President, there’s another possibility to consider here,” he said. “One that relies on more than a wild theory, and in fact actually comes with direct evidence linking it to these stones.”
“Which is?” Moore asked, aggravated by Stecker’s untimely interruption.
Stecker didn’t respond directly to Moore. Instead he spoke into the camera lens, focusing on Henderson. “Mr. President, have you ever heard of the term geomagnetic reversal?”
“North Pole shifting?”
Stecker nodded and motioned for his scientist to make their case. “Talk to the president, Ernest.”
The man in the lab coat got up and cleared his throat. He seemed a little nervous in such company, clearing his throat twice before speaking.
“Over the last hundred million years the north and south magnetic poles have switched places dozens of times. The most recent shift occurred seven hundred and eighty thousand years ago, in an event we call Brunhes-Matuyama reversal. But in the billion years before that, the poles reversed on an almost random time frame, sometimes as quickly as forty or fifty thousand years, in other cases remaining stable for fifty million years or longer. Periods we call superchrons. The truth is that no one understands the timing or mechanism of these reversals.”
Moore studied the man, considering what he was saying and wondering where this was going.
“Now,” the man continued, adjusting his glasses and beginning to sweat, “for the past several years, research specialists from NOAA and other organizations have been actively studying the magnetic field in an effort to better understand this phenomenon.”
The president interrupted. “All very interesting,” he said with undisguised frustration. “What the hell does it have to do with the stones?”
The CIA’s scientist gulped at a lump in his throat. “I’ll show you,” he said meekly and then went back to the computer and began tapping at the keys. A graph appeared on one of the flat screens in the lab; a remote screen in the White House displayed it as well. Across the bottom axis was a timeline, beginning in 1870 and ending in 2012.
Even before the CIA’s man explained the graph, Moore began to feel sick. What the hell were they getting at?
“There are fairly accurate measurements for both the field strength and the position of the north magnetic pole since the late eighteen hundreds,” the scientist explained. “This graph displays the magnitude of the pole’s movement by year.”
He pointed to the thick red line, cutting across the chart. “What we see here is the beginning of a more rapid phase of movement. The movement, already in effect in 1870, accelerated sharply in 1908 for reasons unknown.”
He traced the line with a pointer. “And from there we see a continuing slow deterioration, with the north magnetic pole moving southward, approximately seven or eight miles per year over most years of the past century. A pace that quickened to over twenty miles per year in the last few years.”
A few more clicks on the computer and a second graph appeared, this one representing field strength, with the timeline now stretching back some three thousand years.
“As you can see, the field strength has decreased almost continuously from a high point achieved roughly two thousand years ago. As of last year, the earth’s magnetic field had weakened thirty-five percent from its peak, with almost half of that drop coming since the falloff in 1908.”
The year 1908 was reverberating through Moore’s mind, but he couldn’t say why.
A third chart with a more volatile line popped up on the screen. The time frame on this chart extended back only through 2009.
“This is the field strength over the last three years.”
Moore stared. There were two more dramatic drops and two minor spikes, but if the time index was right, he now knew what the CIA was getting at.
The field strength had dropped an additional 5 percent in the winter of 2010, the exact time when Danielle and what was left of her team had recovered the Brazil stone and brought it to Washington.
A small spike could be discerned, near the end of November of the current year, perfectly coinciding with the burst over the Arctic. And an additional large drop occurred at the far right edge of the chart. Moore guessed that would be tied into the event that had occurred a few days earlier, the same moment that Danielle had pulled the second stone from beneath the Gulf of Mexico.
After that latest drop, the earth’s magnetic field was down almost 50 percent in relative terms, and sitting at an all-time low for the last fifty thousand years.
Unless the data had been faked, even Moore could see that the stones were intimately connected with the weakening of the magnetic field. Their current estimation of the stones’ arrival even coincided with the beginning of the drawdown, around 1000 B.C.